Published on the occasion of the artist's major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this volume explores in depth Christian Marclay's consequential open and multimedia work, whose echo and popularity have continued to grow over time. From his early performances in the 1970s to his iconic Guitar Drag (2000) and his most recent large-scale video installations such as All Together (2018) and Subtitled (2019), assemblages of records and their covers, photographs in all formats, altered musical instruments, videos, combined prints and paintings, objects, and graphic scores ensure the connective tissue of this choral and resolutely polymorphic body of work in perpetual evolution—a practice in which the auditory dimension of our existence, whether literal or silently evoked, is constantly asserted.
Designed by Zak Group, and extensively illustrated, the publication gathers together new essays by writers Polly Barton and Nathalie Quintane, art historians Michel Gauthier and Marcella Lista, and design specialist Catherine de Smet to bring new perspectives to the artist's practice. It also features a comprehensive conversation with Christian Marclay by the exhibition's curator Jean-Pierre Criqui, an anthology of texts from an international array of writers and art historians—Clément Chéroux, Dennis Cooper, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Wayne Koestenbaum, and David Toop—as well as an exhaustive chronology by Annalisa Rimmaudo.